1) In this program of research we first determined that like adults, 5-year old children also had brain regions that responded to verbs that reflect effector (arm or leg) specific verbs (e.g. jump and reach).

James, K.H. & Mauoene, J. (2010). Auditory verb perception recruits motor systems in the developing brain: an fMRI investigation. Developmental Science, 12(6), F26-F34. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00919.x

2) We then showed that activating these regions was experience dependent: only children that learned verbs through self-generated actions (as opposed to watching others perform the same action) showed this adult-like brain activation.

James, K.H., & Swain, S.N. (2011). Only self-generated actions create sensori-motor systems in the developing brain. Developmental Science 14 (4), 673-687.  doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01011.x

James, K.H. & Bose, P. (2011). Self-generated actions during learning objects and sounds create sensori-motor systems in the developing brain. Cognition, Brain & Behavior, 15(4), 485-503.

3) We are now investigating a large corpus of words that are rated as highly active or highly abstract to further understand how brain regions become connected as a result of experience.

Munoz-Rubke, F., Kafadar, K., & James, K. H. (2015). Action is the key to observe the continuum among concrete and abstract words. Poster presented at the 2015 Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA.